Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Of Real Friends and Online Aquaintances

There has been an avalanche of emotions and heavy hearts online with Sondra's passing. Posts have been dedicated to her, Yew Jin dedicated his marathon run, and Tomorrow.sg is compiling a book.

However, there seems to be a worrying common thread... we all regret not knowing Sondra better.

Is this telling of how bloggers are as "friends"? Do we even know the last names of the bloggers we meet? Or are we merely fooling ourselves that we are more than aquaintances?

Of course, there are exceptions like Miyagi and Brown (I hope - since they do their podcast together.) But personally, having been to some blogger meet ups, I cannot help but get the feeling that it might be better to stick to "real" friends, or at least, that there is a need for an additional effort for bloggers to find things that they like about each other - to develop their friendship.

I guess there is a very obvious reason why bloggers do not get close. There are 2 personalities. The one on their blog, and the character they are in person. We develop a relationship or think we develop a relationship with the online persona, and are inevitably shocked when we meet them in real life.

This misfire. This confusion. We remain aquaintances.

True?

2 comments:

Rain said...

Maybe you are right, but I think if I like someone's blog it's because I like their humor, values etc. "Real friends are troublesome too" :)

Rambling Alcoholic said...

I agree that we may like someone's blog because of the way they write but what happens when u meet them in real life?

If real friends are troublesome... then you really got to go find new ones. Haha.